GENDER BALANCE ON BOARDS – CASE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Abstract

Gender balance, nowadays, is one of the most important issues in Europe. On 14 November 2012 the European Commission proposed legislation with the aim of attaining a 40% objective of the under-represented sex in non-executive board-member positions in publicly listed companies. The aim of this new legislation is to accelerate progress towards a better gender balance on the corporate boards of European companies. As a goal of Bosnia and Herzegovina is to join EU as a fully recognized member state one of the important legislations that has to implement and comply with is gender balance/equality on boards. The paper analyses gender balance issue in sample of 737 companies listed on the Banja Luka Stock Exchange. Analysis of the members of board from companies listed on the Banja Luka Stock Exchange was done in order to investigate whether they have a practice of gender balance in their board. Furthermore, paper analyzes 20 largest companies included in index BIRS in order to compare practices of gender balance with the EU member states. The results reveal that sample companies have lower personage of women on boards than average of the 28 EU member states. However, there are many issues which reveal that practice is not as good as percentage of women on boards shows, like: many companies that do not have at least one woman on board, one woman on many boards, boards which comprise of majority or only women, small number of women on top positions on board and as CEOs. The broad conclusion that emerges from the results is that gander balance practice is not on satisfactory level in sample companies from Bosnia and Herzegovina and there is not much done by policymakers and companies to improve such practice. Therefore, in order to improve gender equality on boards it is important that policymakers and companies recognize importance of this issue and start with reforms of legislative framework and improvement of current practice.